For Obama, Mass Shooting Massacres Are Politics As Usual

Blood still stained the halls of Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon-the bodies were still warm, family and friends didn’t even know if loved ones were alive or dead. Yet nearly 3,000 miles away in Washington D.C., President Obama started speaking about the massacre.

His focus was not on the victims, nope. Obama instead used the incident to advance his personal, partisan political agenda, lecturing Americans while pushing hard for new gun control measures.

The victims didn’t seem to mean all that much to President Obama, and apparently, neither do facts.

“There is a gun for roughly every man, woman, and child in America. So how can you, with a straight face, make the argument that more guns will make us safer? We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don’t work, or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens and criminals will still get their guns is not borne out by the evidence.”

However, an analysis by Conservative Intel shows Obama’s statement is simply not true.

According to renowned UCLA Professor Eugene Volkoh, states with more gun laws are no more safe than states with fewer gun restrictions. In fact, states with a lot of gun laws are actually slightly MORE dangerous,

“It turns out that there is essentially zero correlation between these numbers and state gun laws…The correlation between the homicide rate and Brady score in all 51 jurisdictions is +.032 (on a scale of -1 to +1), which means that states with more gun restrictions on average have very slightly higher homicide rates, though the tendency is so small as to be essentially zero.”

Volkoh also put together some handy charts:

Jurisdiction

Homicide rate

Brady score

Brady grade

New Hampshire

1.1

5.5

D‐

Vermont

1.3

-4.0

F

Iowa

1.6

14.0

C‐

Massachusetts

1.8

60.5

B+

Utah

1.8

-2.0

F

Minnesota

1.9

19.5

C

Maine

1.9

3.0

F

Hawaii

2.1

58.5

B+

Idaho

2.2

0.0

F

Wyoming

2.4

-5.0

F

Now the ten highest-homicide ones:

Jurisdiction

Homicide rate

Brady score

Brady grade

Arkansas

6.3

1.0

F

Maryland

6.4

66.5

A‐

Tennessee

6.4

2.0

F

Missouri

6.8

-0.5

F

Michigan

7.1

15.0

C

South Carolina

7.3

1.0

F

Alabama

7.5

3.5

D‐

Mississippi

8.1

-4.0

F

Louisiana

11.6

-2.0

F

D.C.

13.9

50.0

B

Obama also said that:

“We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours — Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.”

“Some people have defended President Obama’s statement by pointing to the word “frequency.” But, even if one puts it in terms of frequency, the president’s statement is still false, with the US ranking 9th compared to European countries…

The CPRC has also collected data on the worst mass public shootings, those cases where at least 15 people were killed in the attack.

There were 13 cases where at least 15 people were killed. Out of those cases, four were in the United States, two in Germany and two in the United Kingdom.

But the U.S. has a population four times greater than Germany’s and five times the U.K.’s, so on a per-capita basis the U.S. ranks low in comparison — actually, those two countries would have had a frequency of attacks 1.96 (Germany) and 2.46 (UK) times higher.

Small countries such as Norway, Israel and Australia may have only one major attack each, one-fourth of what the U.S. has suffered, but the US population is vastly greater. If they suffered attacks at a rate adjusted for their population, Norway, Israel and Australia would have had attacks that were respectively 16, 11, and 3 times greater than the US.

There is also the issue of what President Obama meant by “mass violence.” If you include bombings, many countries face many more bombings than the US does. Take just the bombing cases in Russia. Russia had few mass public shootings, but it suffered from numerous bomb attacks, with 1.31 mass bombing murders per million people.”

Obama’s lies come as the President considers more executive action on guns.

“In response to the latest mass shooting during his presidency, President Obama is seriously considering circumventing Congress with his executive authority and imposing new background-check requirements for buyers who purchase weapons from high-volume gun dealers.

Under the proposed rule change, dealers who exceed a certain number of sales each year would be required to obtain a license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and perform background checks on potential buyers.

As the president heads to Roseburg, Ore., on Friday to comfort the survivors and families of those killed in last week’s mass shooting at Umpqua Community College, the political calculus around his most vexing domestic policy issue is shifting once again.”

>>>Obama would do well to spend some time listening to victims, people like Roanoke massacre survivor Vicki Gardner.

“”So what can we do? The answers may lie not in far off legislative halls but much closer to home,” Gardner wrote…”On a community level, let’s begin by “loving our neighbor as ourselves.” We can draw closer, get to know our neighbors, work together and hold each other accountable.”